How Are You Enjoying the Dictatorship?

 (first posted January 27, 2017)

Oh look America

at what White Supremacy

made you do again.

Fear of change, fear

of knowledge, too. Oh,

look, White men at what

never growing up

has set loose like a

plague. Oh, look,

women, at what

White men want to to

to your body

citing some whacked-

out version of some

scripture. 

Still flying that

Confederate flag

and hanging nooses?

Still really proud

of slavery and Jim Crow? 

Nice way to show

you don't know 

right from wrong. 

Oh, look America

at what snorting

celebrity will get you. 

A bloated faux billionaire

racist on top means

you've hit bottom. Again. 

Where the dictator's 

people will stomp you,

just their way of thanking

you for your support. 

Threshold

Maybe there will be rabbits
in my dreams tonight. Not bunnies--
jackrabbits, wild hares. Maybe
I'll see a vast brown plain filled
with gray smokestacks
overseen by stained skies.

Or maybe centipedes
by the thousands will pour
out of the mouth of the President
of the United States. He'll
speak in centipedes, which
will invade the ears of his
audience. And still a lot
of people won't be horrified.
In fact will be ecstatic.


hans ostrom 2019